Do you ever wonder why your chocolate chip cookies never turn out as tasty and thick as the cookies you find at your local bakery? It’s not that you don’t have the skills necessary to prepare a perfect pan of cookies, but baking is a science, and if your ratio of ingredients or manner of mixing ingredients is flawed, your cookies are never going to reach bakery-levels of perfection.
If you want to elevate your cookies to a professional level of deliciousness, you need to make sure that your recipe is on point and your ratios are scientifically sound. For thick, toothsome cookies like the ones you find at your favorite bakery, you need to make sure that you are using more flour than sugar.
MyRecipes explains that while sugar is clearly a key ingredient of chocolate chip cookies, you don’t want the sugar to match or overwhelm the amount of flour you use.
Some bakers say the traditional, all-purpose flour is the best for chocolate chip cookie recipes, but sometimes cake flour can be used with impressive results. For example, famous pastry chef Jacques Torres uses a combination of bread flour and cake flour for his iconic chocolate chip cookie recipe, and while it can be more laborious to mix and require more careful curation of your pantry goods, the result is legendary for a reason.
Torres also recommends chilling the dough for at least 24-28 hours before baking his chocolate chip cookies, which allows the ingredients to really marry together, meaning that the cookie is chewier and firmer, a hallmark of thick bakery-style cookies.
If you are seeking a puffy, substantial cookie with a chewy bite, you also need to make sure that you are adding enough leavening agent to your dough, as well as the right kind of leavening agent. Baking powder is more likely than baking soda to make your cookies reach for the sky instead of spreading out in a thin, crispy manner. Baking powder is what gives baked goods lift, and it will elevate your chocolate chip cookie recipe in every sense of the word.
Last but not least, Serious Eats says that adding egg whites to your mixture will also help to give your cookies lots of beautiful and yummy height.
And be sure to add a sprinkle of flaked salt on top of your cookies before baking for an extra touch of elegance.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
